


Linger

by willowbilly



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: 12 Days of Carnivale, Blood and Injury, Ficlet, Love Confessions, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 19:35:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17065811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowbilly/pseuds/willowbilly
Summary: Fitzjames couldn't hold out. At least in this, withhim,he neither wants nor needs to.





	Linger

**Author's Note:**

> For the 12 Days of Carnivale prompt "sledge ride."

The grind of the sledge-boat over the rocks vibrates up through the wood and the blankets in which he is swaddled, all the way up into Fitzjames' bones to rattle the very marrow. His teeth are knocked together with every motion, anchored perilously loose in his bleeding gums, but when he clenches his jaw he fears the way they creak. As though his teeth are ready to shatter and break clean away. He might as well be a disarticulated skeleton being jostled about in a sack for how solid he feels. He's a wind chime, and he is mist. If mist and wind chimes can hurt.

By God, how he hurts. The old bullet wound radiates a deep pain which comes and goes in waves. Sometimes it will rise up and crash over him without warning, and it takes everything in him to hold back the scream, so that he will not slow the men's weary march.

When he makes too much noise, Crozier drops back to check on him. He rises like a specter through the haze of suffering. Like an angel, albeit a homely one. A comely homely one.

“An angel?” Crozier repeats. He is caught between worry and gentle, quizzical humor, and as he jogs alongside he makes an aborted gesture towards Fitzjames' head, as though to check his temperature with the back of his wrist, or possibly as if he means to tuck the brittle strands of Fitzjames' hair back behind his ear from whence they have escaped. His hand returns to grip the side of the boat instead.

Crozier's gloves are fraying around the edges. A loop of yarn snags against a splinter of peeling paint. Dirty black on glossy blue-black.

Fitzjames bats his hair away from where it is ticking his nose. He is weak and feverish and his concentration will not cease its drifting and his once-silky hair is beyond all hope, to boot. He recalls Mr. Blanky's tale of Sir John Ross, riding imperiously atop the sledges as those under his command bore the yoke. Fitzjames had tried so very hard not to end up here. “If I'd had a guardian angel as intent on my wellbeing as yourself, that Chinese sniper never would have found his mark, and that story would never have plagued either of us to begin with.”

“I rather grew to like that story,” says Crozier. “Or your telling of it, anyway.”

“Liar,” Fitzjames says, gasping it out in a laugh.

Crozier shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No, I mean it, James.”

“It wasn't the story you grew to like, though,” Fitzjames presses after a moment, probing for the shape of whatever it is which Crozier is not quite saying.

Crozier smiles and averts his eyes, caught out. “All right,” he says. “All right, James. It was you I grew to like.”

Fitzjames' already ragged breath catches in his throat. He fumbles to put his hand atop Crozier's and holds tight with pleading urgency. “You mean that?” he asks.

Crozier's face is so lovely to him now, in a way he never would have expected when all he saw were the man's stifled, drunken sneers directed at him across the lavish officer's table. He is a man who has stepped into the role of leadership and grown to fill it. Changed himself, for the better, all the dross burned away so that only the genuine soul of decency beams through, his visage illuminated and elevated into something noble. Something radiant. And his eyes remain so very gentle. “That and more,” he says roughly, turning his hand in Fitzjames' and holding him firm. Uncaring of how the stray loop of yarn stays to be tugged and further unraveled by the splinter as he moves his glove away. “I love you.”

The confession sends a rush of invigoration through Fitzjames' whole, ruined body, and he smiles so wide his cheeks hurt. He does not lower his voice, so as to be heard over the great background noise of the boats and boots over the rocks. “And I, you, Francis.”

Francis smiles in return and, uncaring of whomever may see, he kisses the back of Fitzjames' hand. His mouth presses chaste through the wool of Fitzjames' own glove, quick but meaningful, and he then passes his thumb across Fitzjames' knuckles as he draws away.

Fitzjames allows his shaky, wasting arm to follow him as he goes, so that their hands may linger together for as long as they can.

 

 


End file.
